Abstract
Poverty simulations allow students, faculty, and community partners to engage mutually in important complex issues. Layering the development of such simulations within a disaster context allows further complexity while fostering professional development skills, social justice attitudes, and community knowledge. This article delineates the development and implementation of a poverty simulation exercise. Students researched and led seminars based on the social determinants of health model to understand the complexities and systems involved in preparing for and recovering from a disaster. Employing the experiential education model, the authors created an interactive learning environment that conveyed the relationships between poverty and disaster vulnerabilities in reflection of professional roles for students and simulation participants. Participant experience calls attention to a gap in emergency management curricula and partially fills it in through interprofessional and interdisciplinary community engagement.